Background
Caal Vo is an underground artist from Chesapeake, Virginia, and raised in Norfolk. He has a major Atlanta influence and chose to move to Atlanta because he noticed that it was one of the main places that were listening to his music. Caal Vo said that he recently moved back to his hometown to bring back the underground scene that it used to be.
“There’s a lot of hard artists from Virginia,” he said. “The type of shit I’m on was a lot different, but now, Virginia is just now getting on that wave. Virginia is late to stuff.”
He said that people from his area don’t have many options when it comes to their futures. He chose to get into music to be a role model of sorts.
“You have two options where I’m from; go to jail, or get killed,” he said. “I’m really speaking about black kids who didn’t have the best upbringing. I wanted to start doing something positive and make money off it. Music is a getaway for some people too.”
Caal Vo said that he records when he’s feeling some type of way. He wants to express himself through his music and even goes to the extent to try to manifest his future in his music.
If you look at Caal Vo’s arm, you’ll see that he has a tattoo dedicated to his late father. This loss took a toll on the artist, but he said that it ultimately fueled the fire for him to continue doing music.
“I know it’s going to sound weird, but if that didn’t happen to me, I wouldn’t be where I am at today,” he said.
Linking Up with Surf Gang
Surf Gang is one of the most influential producing collectives in the underground scene. Caal Vo’s discography is full of songs that members of Surf Gang have produced. One of the main producers Caal Vo has worked with is Evilgiani.
Living in Atlanta is what brought the artists together. He first connected with someone from the collective in Atlanta and finally met Evilgiani sometime later. Caal Vo said that they made a lot of music in the year that they frequently collaborated in.
Gaining Recognition
Caal Vo realized that his music was starting to pay off when he woke up one morning and had an article done on him on the Lyrical Lemonade website. The article was for his last project “Ferris Wheel.” Caal Vo never reached out to the site to ask if they can do a write-up for him, they just recognized the talent that he had.
He got the opportunity to perform that talent when he was supposed to open for Kashdami, although things fell through. The show was sold out and he was told that there was a good amount of people there to see him.
“My manager said there were people asking, ‘Yo where’s Caal?’,” he said. “But I was in and out. I got to that show late.”
“Fr Fr”
His latest release is a single titled, “Fr Fr.” This song has some of the more interesting production Caal Vo has hopped on compared to his entire discography and he even switched his cadence up towards the end of the song.
“I want to come out and drop a small tape like that song,” he said. “People were really surprised when I dropped that. I wanted to give people more music that they can listen to in the car. I feel like they know I’m tapped into my emotional side at this point, so it’s time to give them more hard songs.
Learning in Music
In the music world, artists are going to get criticized for their work close to all the time. Caal Vo said he adheres to criticisms he gets but also knows when someone is hating just to hate on his music. He explained that an artist has to learn how to take criticism early on in their career.
Caal Vo said that the best advice he got was to drop music that he likes, and not what an audience wants to hear.
“At first, I was dropping for everybody else,” he said. “Once I started dropping songs that I liked, that’s when my music started to go up more.”
If you look at his discography, you’ll see that he’s three full-length projects deep (soon to be 4) and has many singles and EPs out. He said that having such a deep discography displays the progress he’s made throughout his career.
Also, these long projects are the new wave of making music. Caal Vo is picking up on the small things of the rap world and implementing them into his own craft. He’s becoming a student of the game.
“Ferris Wheel”
His most recent full-length project is “Ferris Wheel,” an 18-song project full of emotion and great songs. Nowadays, releasing projects with that large number of songs on it is becoming normalized (for example, Yeat). Caal Vo said he wants his projects to remain this long because of the average attention span of today. He explained that “Ferris Wheel” wasn’t an album of songs that were thrown together.
“I worked on it since January 2021,” he said. “It was supposed to be a tape with only Evilgiani, but I ended up dropping all the other songs because they were so good.”
He agreed that when listening to a long album, some songs can slip through the cracks. When you revisit that long album, it’s like listening to it all over again as you rediscover new songs that you may have not paid attention to the first listen.
The best performing song is “LET IT SING,” with over 100,000 plays on SoundCloud. The song is clearly different from the rest of the music he has made, but it displays that he’s truly a versatile artist and can hop on any type of production.
“I thought it was going to peak at 50k,” he said. “When I started doing more Surf Gang shows which made it go up. It got to the point that in July 2021, when ‘LET IT SING’ came on, everyone’s flashlights turned on, and everyone started singing the words.”
The lead song off the project was a song called “Dirty Diana.” It’s the best performing song for the album on Spotify and has a video alongside it. Caal Vo said that the video was shot randomly, and he wasn’t expecting it to do as well as it did on YouTube having over 30,000 views.
Caal Vo’s Future
Having a good group of producers to choose from is crucial for any artist. Caal Vo is trying to curate just that for the future of his career.
Caal Vo has an album titled, “Carnival” dropping April 1st, and has started his lifestyle called “Circus Freak,” where he plans to released clothes and start a network.
He also wants to release a lot of music videos throughout the course of the year. Other than that, be on the lookout for Caal Vo.